"Who blew up Nord Stream?"
"Who blew up Nord Stream?"
There is no shortage of suspects
I’m continually intrigued by the ongoing mystery of who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines. I haven ‘t yet encountered any obviously loonie conspiracy theories connected with it, although I’m sure there are some floating around. Maybe the Republican Congressional hearings on UFOs will provide some. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jewish Space Lasers could figure into the UFO angle.
But this 13-minute DW News report runs through the real-world possibilities and does a decent job of describing the who-benefits? question of motive. At this point, the benefit question makes me confident that the US government at least signed off on the action.
But we in the public really don’t know at this point. And it’s not out of the question that Russia did it - as the Biden Administration suggested1. But the motive suggested for Russia in this video seems a bit of a stretch to me.
Their treatment of Sy Hersh’s plausible if thinly documented report2 is kind of tacky. They basically dismiss him (without saying so) as a Russian dupe because he has appeared on RT programming since 2014. RT has become such a propaganda operation that it may be questionable judgment for even well-established Western experts or reporters to appear on it. But Hersh has been around for a while, and he has a good record of important reporting3 on things not related to gossip about JFK’s love life.4
Ukraine5 and Poland6 are also possible suspects.
Still, the DW News a good report on what for most of us is likely to remain an unsolved mystery for a while.7
Josephs, Jonathan (2022): US suggests Russia could be behind Nord Stream gas leaks. BBC News 09/30/2022. <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63084613> (Accessed: 2023-11-06).
Hersh, Seymour (2023): How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline. Seymour Hersh Substack 02/08/2023. (Accessed: 2023-23-07).
Vlahos, Kelley Beaucar (2023): The Sy Hersh effect: killing the messenger, ignoring the message. Responsible Statecraft 02/16/2023. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/02/16/the-sy-hersh-effect-killing-the-messenger-ignoring-the-message/> (Accessed: 2023-23-07).
Wills, Garry (1997): A Second Assassination. New York Review of Books 12/18/1997. <https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/12/18/a-second-assassination/> (Accessed: 2023-23-07).
Bamford, James (2023): The Nord Stream Explosions: New Revelations About Motive, Means, and Opportunity. The Nation 05/05/2023. <https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nordstream-pipeline-explosions/> (Accessed: 2023-05-05).
Poland was not hub for Nord Stream sabotage, [Polish] prosecutors say. Reuters 06/22/2023. <https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-was-not-hub-nord-stream-sabotage-prosecutors-say-2023-06-22/> (Accessed: 2023-23-07).
Baker, Russ (2023): Fog of War: A Whole New Scenario for Nord Stream Bombing? Going Deep with Russ Baker Substack 06/11/2023. (Accessed: 2023-23-07).